THE ANTHROPOCENE - Plastics and Environmental Sustainability - page 1

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THE ANTHROPOCENE
We, the Homo sapiens sapiens , have enjoyed a relatively short but illustrious
history of about 100,000 years on Earth, adapting remarkably well to its
diverse range of geographical conditions and proliferating at an impressive
pace across the globe. Easily displacing the competing relatives of the genus,
we emerged the sole human species to claim the planet. It is a commendable
feat indeed, considering the relatively low fertility and the high incidence
of reproductive failures in humans compared to other mammals. A good
metric of this success is the current world population that has increased
exponentially over the decades and now standing at slightly over seven
billion. It is estimated to grow to about 10 billion by 2100, given the
increasing longevity worldwide. At this growth rate, the number of people
added to the global community next year will now be equal to about the
populationofasmallcountry(suchasEnglandorFrance)(Stecketal.,2013).
The world population increased 1 by 26% just in the past two decades! The
plethora of environmental issues we face today and the more severe ones
yet to be encountered tomorrow are a direct consequence of this dominant
human monoculture striving to survive on a limited base of resources on the
planet. As we approach the carrying capacity 2 of the planet, competition for
space and scarce resources, as well as rampant pollution, will increase to
unmanageable levels, unless the human race carefully plans for its future . 3
However, no global planning strategies have been agreed upon even at this
late hour when irrefutable evidence of anthropogenic climate change,
deforestation, and ocean pollution is steadily accumulating. Incredibly, no
clear agreements are there on whether the looming major environmental
problems are real or imaginary.
Though it did happen on Earth, the simultaneous occurrence of the
conditions that support life as we know it is a very unlikely event, and even
here, it is certainly a transient phenomenon. Life on Earth exists over the
brief respite (in geological timeline) thanks to a cooling trend between the
cauldron of molten metal the Earth was a few billion years back and the
sun-scorched inhospitable terrain will turn into a few billion years from now.
Even so, life spluttered on intermittently with a series of ice ages, geological